Inside-Out Carrot Cake Muffins

Have you ever tasted a carrot cake in muffin form? It’s a truly delightful and cute experience, I have to say.

These carrot cake muffins taste just like a carrot cake, except, well, in the form of a muffin.

I really like their lovely cinnamony taste and their moist texture. But what I like best is that they have the frosting already ‘built in’. Yes, they hide this wonderful baked-in, sweetened cream cheese filling inside.

8. To make the filling, place the cream cheese in a microwave-safe bowl and heat on low power for 40 seconds. Stir in the sugar and vanilla. Set aside.

9. Line a standard 12-muffin pan with paper muffin cups and grease the cups.

10. Drop about 2 tablespoons of the batter (a cookie or ice-cream scoop works well here) into each muffin cup, spreading it to cover the bottom.

I added a little more than 2 tablespoons of the batter as the first layer which resulted in the filling ending up a bit too high. So, the point is just to cover the bottom of the pan with your first layer.

11. Dollop on a heaping tablespoon of filling.

12. Cover with enough batter to fill the muffin cups quite full.

13. Bake the muffins at 400 °F (205 °C) until a toothpick inserted into the cake part of one (not into the cream cheese filling) comes out clean, about 20 minutes. The tops of the muffins will feel firm to the touch.

14. Remove the muffins from the oven and tilt them in their cups (two forks could help you here). This way your muffins will cool more quickly.

Enjoy, dear friends!

These are yummy!

(This recipe was adapted from kingarthurflour.com. It makes 12 muffins.)

These look great. I have often used carrot cake batter as muffins and they are great. Even without the filling! Take any cake batter and put it in muffin tins and voila, mini versions of your favorite cakes!

These carrot cake muffins look delicious. I’ll bake these for my family this weekend. My kids are home from college and they love daddy’s cooking. 🙂 My wife loves the break so everyone is happy. I’ll post an update to let everyone know how they turned out.